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SharpFang writes "In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that misinformed people, particularly political partisans, rarely changed their minds when exposed to corrected facts in news stories. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."

It's nothing but lies designed to obscure the fact that Barak Hussein Obama is a Muslim terrorist who wants to entrance our children with commie healthcare. The sooner he goes back to his hometown in Kenya the better.

Mama, just killed a threadPosted a picture of Hitler's HeadGodwined it and now it's deadMama, the thread had just begunBut now I've gone and thrown it all awayMama, oohI want to make it dieIf it's not locked tight by this time tomorrowCarry on, carry on as if nothing really matters

Too late, this thread is doneSends electrons down my lineBrain is aching all the timeGoodbye, everybodyThe thread has got to goThe troll will leave you all behind 'cuz it's a doucheMama, oooooooh (Anyway the thread goes)This thread don't wanna dieSometimes wish it'd never been born at all

[Guitar Solo]

I see a little silhouetto of a trollMeta-whoosh, Meta-whoosh, he didn't get it at allPolitics, Religion, can't believe I fed him! Sheesh!(Hitler Stalin) Obama Palin (Global Warming) I'm Just Sayin', Do not feed the little troll!Magnifico-o-o-o-oI'm just a poor troll nobody loves meHe's just a poor troll check his facebook page and seeHe's made this thread into another travesty

Easy come, easy go, will you let me troll?Bismillah! No, we will not let you trollLet him trollBismillah! We will not let you trollLet him trollBismillah! We will not let you trollLet me troll (Will not let you troll)Let me troll (Will not let you troll) (Never, never, never, never)Let me troll, o, o, o, oNo, no, no, no, no, no, no(Oh mama mia, mama mia) Mama Mia, let me trollThe Sysadmin has a banning put aside for me, for me, for me!

So you think you can troll me and spit in my eyeSo you think you can troll me and leave me to dieOh, douchebag, can't do this to me, douchebagYou just get out, just gotta get right outta here

For Obama to try something like 'commie healthcare', he has to be a liberal first, and he is not, he is a politician of the kind, who do not care about ideology.

I am a libertarian, I care about ideology and thus I will never be in government. Ron Paul or Peter Schiff (who is trying to become a Senator right now) are very exceptional people, in that they care enough to try and fix the system based on their ideology and not so that they can personally make money or get more power.

I would caution anyone voting for Peter Schiff, who's ultimate goal is to crash the dollar since he has been predicting that for about a decade. Solipsism can do just as much damage as greed or a lust for power.

I agree with Ron Paul on many things, but as long as he stays within the Republican Party, they'll never let him be more than a sideshow.

Just like Ron Paul works in the government to his own financial detriment - he wants to audit the Fed, he wants to stop bleeding of money in wars, he is personally invested in gold up to 50%. Anything he succeeds at actually would cause the gold prices to come down. Like raising the interest rates, getting back to production and sound economy.

Schiff is exactly the same - he is against any spending, he is against printing of money to STOP the hemorrhage of the dollar, which

The only difference between what I said and what you said is that you believe Schiff has good intentions. But the fact remains: Schiff is personally invested right now in the failure of the US dollar. He has staked his reputation on it. If presented with an option to freeze spending and deny social services on a massive scale that would certainly destroy the American economy, Schiff would support it, because he has said many times before that such a collapse is the cure our economy needs for the disease of

Notice how all of the fascist, unconstitutional and Anti-American policies that Bush and Cheney implemented (and should have legitimately resulted in impeachment and at least life sentences in prison ) are still in effect?

Nothing has changed, therefore conservative.

Obama is a conservative, not a liberal.

We have a far right wing fascist party and a moderate right wing fascist party.

Are we pre-preemptively invading nations?
Are we declaring war without congress?
Are we giving tax breaks to the rich?
Are we legitimizing young earth creationists?
Are we performing illegal wholesale wiretaps on everyone? Oh wait, yeah, we're still doing that one. You got me there. But the rest? Naw. So he's way better in that regard. He's no second coming, but he's really not that bad. It'd be nice if he brought the troops home, and stopped being a dick with the wiretaps, but most of the rage people direc

Nazi is not an economic label, for example it does not mean a 'fascist' - which means ruling by corporations really.

Now to your core questions:

Are we pre-preemptively invading nations? - why, do you have to invade nations every year and a half, was that actually happening under any republican government, I mean aren't the current wars enough for now to satisfy the need for blood by the military industrial complex? Did you leave Iraq? How about Afghanistan? You think you are leaving any time soon? You think the Afghanistan mission has anything to do with actual terrorism? curious.

Are we declaring war without congress? - why, did any democrat declare a war with congress? Did Bill Clinton declare a war with congress before bombing former Yugoslavia?

I just copied this from a wiki page for you:

In a remarkable vote against the war in Yugoslavia, the House of Representatives, by a vote of 213 to 213, failed to give the President the constitutionally required authorization he needed to carry on the air war against Yugoslavia.

Are we giving tax breaks to the rich? -:) do you think that bailing out largest corporations is somehow dissimilar to giving them tax breaks? Is City or GS etc. suffering much in terms of bonus payouts for example? Just asking.

Fascist doesn't mean ruling by corporations. The economic component to fascism is underdeveloped and relatively nonspecific - trying to reduce it to that gives you a notion of fascism that's almost empty. Fascism is more of an attempt to use nationalism and a myth of peoples to reject rationalism and use a spirit of the people to achieve greatness. It never said much about economic policy ; its only real commitment is to a strangely warped version of conservativism. Unlike the socialists who were trying to sweep across europe and throw off old oppressive social structures, fascists didn't really have a clear idea where they were going, they just had this idea of reclaiming the greatness of the roman empire.. somehow, and fighting off the socialist movements. It'd probably be best to consider fascism to be a state of mind - an ambition and delusion that desires to be shared by an entire injured society on its way "up".

Let's keep it simple: anyone who wants to increase government power is a progressive.

Without agreeing or disagreeing with your thesis: do you realize (and would you agree) that this would make GW Bush a very, very progressive president when you consider the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act?

A progressive believes that the current system not working as well as it should, and that it must be improved from within.

Compare to revolutionary that believes that change is needed, but the system can not be changed from within.

Compare to a conservative who approves of the current state of government.

A Regressive believes that recent changes have been for the worse and seeks to repeal them.

None of these infer as to what direction they believe the change should be in. These are the meanings of these words untwisted by any personal and political agenda. Other political terms like liberal, right and left are somewhat more open to interpretation.

Are you just making up definitions or is that Beckian? Glenn Beck has been railing against progressives so I'll guess the latter.

The definition of progressive is really simple, it just isn't anything that you think: progressives believe that society can be improved for all through organized action, including government policy.

Liberals are people who value personal liberty, the rights and well being of the individual person.

Conservatives are people who place importance on laws, tradition and hard learned lessons.

The kind of person your describing might be properly called a Statist, or even Authoritarian.

So the Iraq war for instance, killed tens of thousands of innocent people, so it's not liberal, violated national and international law, had not prospect of completing it's objectives, and was a stupid move, so it's not conservative, and it's not progressive because it destroyed a whole chunk of society, but it's surely statist.

Gun control ain't liberal, it's not conservative, but it is statist and progressive (if it really improves society).

Social action to end segregation was liberal, wasn't conservative, was anti-statist, but was still progressive.

No, Obama is not a liberal at all. Even before election it was clear to me that no liberal can become a president of US so he could not have been one and it was a correct assessment.

Obama has no liberal principles, and I do not mean libertarian principles, I mean liberal.

Were Obama a liberal he would not have tried so hard to make all of the republican/conservative moves. You would have to search hard to find something, where Obama is showing any liberal/progressive leanings, specifically where it concern

You're confusing competence with ideology. You can be a liberal (or a conservative, or a libertarian, or a Marxist, etc) and still be incapable of getting things done. "Ram it down their throats" isn't a characteristic of any one ideology, necessarily (though some, like Communism, use it to full effect). No matter how popular a politician is, "ram it down their throat" is usually bad bad bad. FDR was popular, but when he tried to pack the Supreme Court, the public started threatening to impeach him, and he never went near the subject again. So the fact that he failed means that he wasn't a liberal, by your reasoning?

No no, a real commie/liberal bastard would have come there and stuffed a single-payer system down everybody's throat, the kind that I hated in Canada (remember, I am not a liberal, my leanings are all practical, I despise governments for distorting the market.)

While I agree with the rest of your rant, I must point out that healthcare lacks the necessary pre-conditions for a market activity and as such cannot be left to the tender mercies of the capitalist "free market". One of the fundamental problems is the lack of any possibility whatsoever of consumer making an "informed purchase" from competing vendors, particularly while unconscious in an ambulance or in excruciating pain. And it just goes downhill from here.

Therefore it logically follows that healthcare has to be dealt with in a completely different framework, very much the same way as other essential societal infrastructure, like the justice system or roads.

You don't give any citations, so I have to guess a bit at your time-line. I picked 1970. The average income for the entire decade was about $7500/year, so probably below that for the year 1970. Your deductible of $500 suddenly looks incredibly high, putting health care out of the reach of the poor. Which is exactly why the government got involved. Did it increase demand? Of course; suddenly people were receiving care that before couldn't afford it. That was the point. Obviously, if we just stopped providing health services to people that can't afford them, costs will reduce. Or if we figure out a way to take the billions in dollars insurance companies make in profit every year and put that into an actual productive part of the system, costs will reduce. When the choice is between peoples' lives and corporations' profits, one strikes me as more like an actual right that should be protected by government.

Nothing at all exists in this world that is not subject to the simple rules of thermodynamics, and economics is fundamentally the same thing.

That's just stupid. The only time in which your analogy could be even close to accurate is in a situation where there absolutely zero interference in the marketplace by the government. This would mean no official paper currency, no bank regulations, no consumer protections, no anti-trust laws, no zoning laws, etc.

In the modern world, our economic systems are artificial constructs, which are designed by people; not by nature. If we are going to enjoy the benefits of having a modern marketplace, then we need to take responsibility for fixing the problems that exist with it. Your belief that ignoring problems in a modern marketplace will lead the marketplace fixing itself is akin to believing that ignoring problems in a house will lead to the house fixing itself. In the case of both house and economic system, negligence will only lead to deterioration and eventually collapse.

I guess that you didn't see where they said "political partisans"?Take a look in the mirror dude. It is the same on both sides.

My rule of thumb. Never trust anybody that has a political bumper sticker on their car or claims to be a "supporter".

To give you an example from the other side. I didn't like Obama's space policy before the election. I still don't. When I showed people his policy they said that it wasn't so. When I showed it to them on his own website they said that they are sure he wouldn't do it.When I told the same partisan that it was a Republican president and not Kennedy that put forth not just the first but the first and second Civil Rights acts I was again called a liar. When I showed him that it was true and showed him that by percentage more Republicans supported Kennedy's Civil Rights reforms than Democrats did he went into a fit of rage!

By the way my point was that one shouldn't support or vote for parties but individuals. I was trying to show that that there are good people as well as scum in both parties.You how ever are every bit as much of the problem as the people you dislike so much. Two sides of the same coin.

And I do not like Presidents Obama's space policy. His health care reforms are not terrible but he didn't do enough about drug costs. His energy policy is a nightmare. I do not think he is a good president.But he was born in Hawaii and what people seem to forget is it doesn't matter if he wasn't!You do not have to be born on US soil to be born a US citizen. If one of you parents is a US citizen you are a US citizen!If not then any US living abroad for work, school, or military service that has a child would have issues!That isn't the way it works so no it doesn't matter even if he wasn't born in Hawaii.And being a Muslim doesn't mean you can not be president. Just as being Catholic, Mormon, or Jewish means you can not be a US president.So there!

It's tragic that news is, or at least perceived to be, entertainment (in the US at least - it's not like that everywhere thank fuck). It's also tragic that people aren't up in arms over that, dragging network executives down the streets by their hair. What the fuck? Factual, accurate news broadcasts are important to the well-being of a country. They are the cornerstone of democracy.

It makes for a really neat Catch-22. Because the press is 'free', it is also for sale. There's no way to prevent the corporate/wealthy interests from gaining control over the media without allowing the government to control it instead.

So, pick your evil -

A) Government-run media

B) Greed-run media

There isn't any 'C'. At least not within the reasonable confines of established western civilization.

There is. For instance Germany has the ARD, which in turn consists of broadcasting entities in each federal state, controlled by the respective state.The broadcasting entities are producing their own magazines and news broadcasts, but all are broadcasted via the same network. Because different states lean differently, you have pretty leftist magazines sharing time slots with pretty conservative magazines, you have rather green magazines running one week and at the same time the next week very pro business magazines, depending on the broadcasting entities which produces them.The system is not perfect, but at least it gets somewhat more balanced than just having one controlling entity for everything.

... he's just an entertainer like any other news or talk media figure.

Then there's the case of Jon Stewart, who keeps reminding people that he's a professional comedian, and still so many people treat him as a serious journalist. The same thing happens repeatedly to his other people. No matter that they identify themselves as being from Comedy Central, their interviewees still often take them seriously.

It's all part of why the folks who do satire and parody keep saying how difficult their job is, especially when Real World people keep doing things that are even crazier than anything they'd dare write as comedy.

He is sometimes taken as a serious journalist because he asks questions that others are afraid to ask. He doesn't care about getting these people back; they think they can go in and handle the clown. He is whip smart. But he never, ever says, "I'm just being objective here." Unless, of course, he is being clearly biased and mocking someone else who is being clearly biased and lying about facts. Is he partisan? I think he'd say he is, a bit, but he doesn't let liberals off scott free. It's just that the conservative hate machine has an entire network devoted to bullshit and the liberals have "mainstream media," which can't do a story about the Earth being a globe without digging up a flat-earther somewhere. (Two sides to every story is a double-edged sword.) So that gives Stewart and crew a lot to work with.

It's a good thing we have intelligent rational thinkers working against ignorance. Otherwise we might come off like a bunch of assholes that just want to push our views on others. You know. Like "those" guys.

In the end, the only difference between the educated and the uneducated with regards to facts is the source of their beliefs.

Absolutely nobody has time to research everything they accept as factual, which means that they have to accept on trust.

The educated ideally have a system by which that trust can operate effectively. One part is the scientific method, the other part is peer review. We delegate bullshit detection to specialists in the appropriate fields.

The problem with this is that many specialists are, these days, financed by special interest groups who want specific answers to be asserted as true whether or not they actually are. Even if this had no actual impact (it actually does but that is unimportant), it destroys the entire web of trust.

If there is no web of trust that you can feel safe in relying on, then you have no alternative but to use the method used by the uneducated, which is to opt in to the mob mentality.

This is because the human condition will not permit a void. Where there is a gap in awareness, the brain will fill it with something. Anything. The brain abhors a void far more than nature ever did.

If you can delegate awareness (be it to some system, some radio station, some religion, or some political belief), then the void is filled by that system. You don't have to know the answer as you have assigned the problem of knowing elsewhere.

In the case of the scientific method and peer review, this substitution actually works remarkably well - provided there is no failure within that system.

In the case of religion, etc, the substitution has some value in that it permits an uninformed society to function. We could never have developed civilization without such a substitution. It may not be the only reason for religion to have existed, but it is definitely a function religion served.

(Even in the early days of civilization, delegation to superstition was essential. The Hippocratic Oath was a splendid method of creating a codified standard of conduct and a method of enforcement in a society that neither understood standards nor recognized enforcement. Modern society also lacks these, but also lacks any backbone for the Hippocratic Oath, hence the abuse of medicine.)

Those who do not delegate anything and try to be totally self-reliant -- bad mistake. Those who don't end up addicts end up schizophrenic. It is a factor in why I reject utterly the popular American ideal of the self-reliant person. The people who actually achieve such an ideal do so by entering the nuthouse or the grave. Doesn't sound very ideal to me.

Fact: Obama himself thinks that continuing to spend is the answer to the economic problems we face.

Well, yes it is. The economic problems are because you need a certain minimum level of cashflow for a market economy to work. Either you have to re-inflate the economy or abandon the capitalist system. You can't have capitalism without capital.

(Which, interestingly, means that Republicans are anti-capitalist and anti-market at the moment. You cannot believe in market forces if you do not believe in the right o

The era of objective journalism was a lot shorter than most people tend to think. The very idea that journalism was different from politics really only emerged around WWII.

Go look up some revolutionary era newspapers, some Jacksonian era newspapers, some antebellum newspapers, some reconstruction newspapers, some gilded age newspapers... you'll see bias not even fox news would stoop to.

Is there such a thing as a liberal media bias? In some cases, sure. The NY times and MSNBC have a liberal slant, but really, conservatives have a bit of history crying wolf on this front. Tom Brokaw might have been a liberal, but that doesn't mean the NBC nightly news was.

I also think that Fox news is the most slanted major media outlet (this opinion is undeniably influenced by my bias), from the Acorn nonsense to the Fox News organized tea parties if they're not the worst, they at least have the most influence.

News outlets did this to themselves. Point in case? How many people heard about Israel killing Turkish citizens on the aid flotilla headed for Gaza? Probably everyone. Now how many people heard about the reason the blockade existed? Probably a lot less of you. Now how many people heard about the fact that no shots were fired until the people on the boat attacked the soldiers with metal rods, knives, and bats and were abour to cut them from head to toe? Probably none of you. Yet the Youtube video show exactl

Yet just this morning I heard a recap of the events where they left out those very important facts. Rewriting history by leaving out facts is morally and ethically wrong and yet that is what the Mainstream Media do all the time.

I'm not sure what you mean by mainstream media but I was aware of all of those facts. All too often the distinction between mainstream media and other media is a false one predicated on whether one agrees with the coverage and that's why I ask. For example, some people do not consider FOX News to be mainstream media but it's the most popular news station on television. Obviously that's absurd...

This is one of the reasons that I dislike discussing/arguing issues in person. They will bring up some information I hadn't heard before, but I have no idea whether it is reliable or not. I try not to be set in my beliefs, but 90% of the "facts" that people spout usually had some foundation in truth originally but have become so misinterpreted by the time they heard it that it is almost complete crap. I like to look into things before I accept them, but that isn't an option in person. If you can't immediately refute any random thing they bring up and won't just accept what they say as gospel truth then you are pegged as a ignorant stubborn idiot. Furthermore, when I am pressed like that I do feel a strong desire to dig in and defend myself, when otherwise I would just take in the information and have one more thing to mull over while I continue to read about the issue.

I'd say that you're overestimating how good the spouted "facts" are. My expectation is that the "facts" will be 100% crap, not 90% crap, and when talking to certain people I usually blindly assume that they are wrong on everything they say, and check myself after the fact. I can always recant stuff in a follow-up discussion. This works quite well in general, and with certain people it's a slam dunk -- it never fails. They always spew crap, and while I may not be able to pin-point immediately why they are wr

A cultural norm my European cousins have noticed about Americans is that we seem to be taught to believe what "friends tell us" more than "stranger tell us" even when that relationship seems irrelevant. They observe that seems to make Americans rather listen to people we know instead of "experts tell us" and sometimes outright hostility to "authority tells us". Anyone with a little bit of collegic philosophy or logic study should realize that it isn't that our friends are purposely misleading but that the

The saddest part of this story for us, nerds, is that our strongest weapon - our knowledge, superior understanding of facts, digging deeper into matters than cheap news stories, is in fact totally inefficient against "joe average". The more you argue your case the worse your chance to -really- win the argument, convince the other side. More often they will admit defeat to get you off their neck and keep believing their falsehood even stronger.

The saddest part of this story for us, nerds, is that our strongest weapon - our knowledge, superior understanding of facts, digging deeper into matters than cheap news stories, is in fact totally inefficient against "joe average". The more you argue your case the worse your chance to -really- win the argument, convince the other side. More often they will admit defeat to get you off their neck and keep believing their falsehood even stronger.

That is why John Hodgeman's punch line "Glen Beck makes a lot of sense if you think about it. If you don't think about it, he makes even more sense" makes me quite sad.

Or perhaps we shouldn't just rely on reciting a litany of facts in hope of winning an argument. Rather, engage in a debate using questions that guide the other person into applying their own logic to the dicussion so that they reach their own reasonably sound conclusion. Don't try to win an argument, let the other person win your argument for you.

The saddest part of this story for us, nerds, is that our strongest weapon - our knowledge, superior understanding of facts, digging deeper into matters than cheap news stories, is in fact totally inefficient against "joe average".

Us nerds here? Can't tell you how many times I've corrected people here, providing them with links to sources demonstrating the validity of my correction, just to have them not only defend their ignorance rabidly, but have moderators take their side. People who self-identify as nerds don't have a better track record in self-delusion as Joe Sixpack, even though they want to believe that they do.

Still, I believe that stating the truth and seeing it ignored is better than letting the lie go unchallenged:(

I've heard just as much dreck from nerds believing they have a superior understanding of facts as from those who don't so self-identify.

Economists, for example.

As a side note, it really would be nice if we didn't believe we lived in a world that was a war of ideas requiring "winning arguments" and "convincing others." Consensus and, as USA's founders used to use a lot, compromise, are the hallmarks of good decision-making and discourse.

Yes. It's disappointing, but the way to sway people is to use anecdotes instead of data, and use appeals to emotion instead of reason.

So don't talk about a million sick children dying of a vaccine-preventable disease, just pick one kid and talk about him. And don't talk about how our purpose is to save lives and increase human prosperity, just say how that kid sure is sad and sick and it's such a shame and wah wah.

Yes, I'm serious, that's the way to do it. Take all of your nerdy intuitions and do exactly the opposite.

We would have gone out and dug up our own information. And our beliefs wouldn't be based on incorrect information in the first place.

Be nice to think so but it's been my experience that people, including supposedly intelligent people, will just go find misinformation that suits what they want to believe and truth be damned. I offer the entirety of slashdot comments as evidence.

Well people (and by people I mean you and me as well) believe a whole lot of things just because that's the way we were brought up. We have never really dug into our beliefs thoroughly. When it comes to politics it really is some sort of emotional connection, not fact based, facts can't change our minds when this is the case. Politicians like to play on our innate sense of belonging, our fears, not however our minds.

There's something called the Kruger-Dunning effect which is kinda interesting as well Dunning-Kruger effect [wikipedia.org]. The premise is the following one:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes.

Seriously, this looks like a weak rehash of Festinger's (1957) Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, only without the data or depth of study. People change their opinions to suit their convictions, and shown by Festinger's study of the reactions of doomsday cults' reactions to the fact the the world didn't end on the expected date (c.f., "When Propheshy Fails"). Really, what am I missing here?

Well, "cognitive dissonance" has always been sort of an armchair theory, there have always been people [dbem.ws] who doubt that it actually even exists, and that its effects can just as easily be explained by other psychological phenomena (and I have to say, seeing the Tea Partiers who parade around with signs like "Get the Government out of my Medicaid!" without the slightest hint of irony seems to lend credence to this opinion). This is an experiment which evaluates a behavior, instead of creating a theory to fit o

I know this is Idle but there's been a lot of articles related to how people think lately. Myself, I'm perfectly okay with people having different viewpoints. Even outright wrong ones. Why should I care about it? So there are people that think their party is infallible and fall for the party talking points. Nothing new really and understanding it doesn't really change much. I can't really use this information beyond what I think are some common sense rules about people in general.

Diversity is part of humanity. Who's to say where the next great change will come from? Logical thinking is not the end-all be-all for human prosperity.

There is a difference between diversity and ignorance. Diversity would be people's views on abortion or whether there should be prayer in schools.

Ignorance is claiming Obama isn't an American because he's never shows his birth certificate even though Hawaii has repeatedly indicated they do not give out copies of such. They only give Certificates of Live Birth, similar to what other states do.

Yet, we have people like Senator Vitter (R, LA) continuing to trot the misinformation about Obama's citizenship despite evidence to the contrary.

He could have had his birth certificate lost or destroyed (fires do happen, things get lost in traveling, etc).

If he doesn't actually have a birth certificate, he can't show it, can he? The best he can do is go back to the hospital and ask for a replacement. However, as Hawaii and other states don't give out copies of Birth Certificates, the best he can do is have a Certificate of Live Birth.

Further, as others have repeatedly pointed out, there is the birth announcement in the Hawaiian newspaper. It's a bit hard to claim that 40-some-odd years ago, someone placed a fake birth announcement in a newspaper so some black guy could be elected President.

As to the proof of his birth, which Birthers repeatedly deny isn't valid despite it being used by several states (and which goes back to the heart of this story):

You mean to tell me they can't make an exception for the president? It would really put all of the questioning to rest if he showed it. It just seems strange to me that he won't.

TFA is all about the fact that, no, it wouldn't. Conspiracy theorists always believe that there's a deeper layer. They demanded to see Obama's birth certificate. So they released the certificate offered by the state of Hawaii. In the minds of the birthers, this only PROVED that he wasn't born in America, because that's not the real birth certificate. He's obviously hiding the truth! He's lying!

That's exactly what the article is pointing out - people who strongly believe something are likely to see evidence against them as a part of the conspiracy, that people are lying to trick them out of their beliefs. Show the birthers the "real" certificate, and they'll probably believe it was a forgery.

For most people, Politics, like Sports and Religion is all about having an emotional attachment to something - they're for/with/believe a group/ideology because they feel like "one of the group" and one cannot be against oneself.

A high level of intelectual abilities (i.e. IQ) is no defense against it: just look at all the religious-like flamewars around things like editors and operating systems.

In order to do trully informed judgements one must first be aware of one's inner-self, one's drives and fears and be capable of analysing one's motives. One must be capable of separating the "logic" from the "feelings" and the "habits" in the way things are perceived, interpreted and reasoned about.

Unfortunatly this requires a level of inner maturity that seems to be far above that of most people...

Can be found here http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf [umich.edu]. The statistical correlations found were weak, in some cases not even statistically significant. Also, for some questions they didn't see any backfire effect (where corrections make people believe the lies more) for all questions. For example, when dealing with liberals, there was no backfire effect when correcting the misconception that George Bush banned stem cell research (he in fact restricted it to a specific set of cell lines). However, in this case, correction did not alter the belief level although it didn't create a backfire result. Clearly, more research is needed. There's also a relevant older article which shows that uninformed people are more likely to think they are informed. http://ann.sagepub.com/content/560/1/143.abstract [sagepub.com]. This connects with the Dunning-Kruger effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org] where incompetent individuals generally overestimate their own competency.

The experience of the last century shows that fanatics can remain hermetically sealed from the truth until the fabric of their society collapses around them, and there is literally rubble in the streets.

I think that education is the only hope to fix this, but that means that this will be a problem for the rest of our lives, if not a lot longer.

Second, the adult human brain is engineered to actually dismiss information that it does not agree with. There was a very good article I read (that I think was posted a while ago on/.) that explained the situation very well. In summary, the prefrontal cortex of the adult human brain is the "information filter" that is responsible for filtering out "unnecessary" information. For example, ask yourself how many people you walked by today. Then ask yourself how many of those peoples' faces do you remember vividly? Though your eyes most likely saw many, many faces, your prefrontal cortex filters out that information before it even is stored in short-term memory. I know there's an article out there that explains the science more thoroughly, but sadly I failed to find it.

Anyways, the same information filter that filters out unnecessary information also is also responsible for blocking any information that it determines to be dissonant from accepted information, i.e. cognitive dissonance [wikipedia.org]. In this previously mentioned misplaced article, scientists hooked up participants to an MRI in an experiment analyzing how their brains processed conflicting information. The participants were sorted into two groups: physics majors and non-physics majors. The video was a recreation of Newton's gravity experiment, where a person drops a tennis ball and a bowling ball, both hitting the floor at the same time. When the physics majors saw the experiment, their brain did not register much activity, because what they saw was already what they knew to be true. But when the non-physics majors watched the video, the "WTF" section of their brain went crazy. In short, they believed that the bowling ball would hit the ground first, and when it didn't, their brain had a difficult time processing the information that conflicted with previously held beliefs. When faced with this confliction, adult minds must either reclassify what they know (a very difficult task for the adult brain), or filter out what they have just witnessed (a very easy task for the adult brain). In the end, I'm sure most of those non-physics majors ended up rationalizing what they saw with excuses such as, "Video editing" or "lead weight inside tennis ball."

As difficult as it is, the only way to prove to someone the truth is to first prove to them that their accepted beliefs are false. The only way this is possible is to take what they believe to be true, then show them how their own "facts" are inconsistent with one another. Only by creating cognitive dissonance within their own thoughts, rather than introducing it from an external stimulus, can you create the conditions necessary for them to be willing to listen to truth.

B.F. Skinner did some very interesting experiments with pigeons. He kept them hungry and put them in a cage with a food dispenser that would dispense a food pellet at random intervals (with a known average interval). When the pellet dropped the bird would instinctively connect it with some random movement it had made just prior to the food appearing. It would then repeat that movement over and over again until another pellet dropped. Since it did not work every time the bird would also connect other random

We are a culture that values strength over intelligence. A man who is unflexible, unyielding, who cannot be changed is strong. A man who is open to change, who compromises appears to have a weak heart. When we argue and discuss, our goal is not to learn something, is not to find the right answer - our goal is to win the argument

In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments.

They weren't even thinking about political orientation. And why would they? They're psychology professors researching personality theory, personality development, research methodology, and stuff like that.

Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. Why? Who knows. Maybe for craps and giggles. Maybe because they had a column blank on their spreadsheet and wanted to fill it with one more metric to see if there was a link between voting and eating the erasers on the tops of pencils.

What was interesting to them was the arresting patterns they found.

As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient.

People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3.

Don't forget: the Blocks had NO IDEA what political affiliation any of the three year-olds would have when they did the survey in 1969. But go forward twenty years, and there it is. Everything that people say they want their kids to be: kids just like that became Libs. Everything that makes short-tempered parents scream and beat their kids: future applicants for a CPAC pass and an EIB golf shirt request on the Christmas list.

The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics. The article doesn't say if Professor N.S.Sherlock lit his pipe and smiled knowingly to himself upon hearing the results, but I wouldn't die of surprise if it happened.

Hah, you sir are truly delusional. *Every* political party has its share of disinformation and lies. To single out a specific party as being the culprit of misinformation only serves to show just how ignorant and naive you are.

I'll go one further and say that *every* political party actively engages in pastisanship, fearmongering, and disinformation - with the explicit intent of making the electorate less rational and less able to make clear choices. The study in TFA (correctly) paints this phenomenon as a bad thing, but for political hucksters it's not a bad thing; it's a good thing - a great thing - when you can turn people into mindless partisan zombies just by throwing a few lies around.

To be honest I am surprised that on Slashdot this article hasn't resulted in a full-blown trash-the-conservatives-fest. I'm impressed actually... perhaps the group here has matured. Although I am considering that the perceived difference is due to the fact that the 10:00AM EST Slashdot is different from the 4:00PM EST Slashdot.

In any case, reading through the article I found that it was a nice conversation, but really didn't tell us much of what we don't already know: people are social animals, and love to

This might also be in part because of... ah, a shattering of expectations. A lot of liberals had hoped that getting their party back into power would mean that they could get things fixed (and I count myself as one of them). Putting this administration into power has made a lot of us realize that there's a lot wrong with Congress that can't be fixed by putting any one particular party in power.

You, sir, are very delusional if you don't think the Republicans far outpace the Democrats when it comes to outright lying to their constituents. How many Fox News viewers think Saddam was responsible for 9/11?
No, both parties manipulate the truth to their benefit but one party takes it to a whole new and exciting level.

"How many Fox News viewers think Saddam was responsible for 9/11? No, both parties manipulate the truth to their benefit but one party takes it to a whole new and exciting level."

Not many. How many people think that global warming is man-made, even though there is evidence to prove otherwise? How many people believe that bush started the war to make himself rich?

As you can see here [atlanticreview.org] about 1/3 of the american population believe that saddam was directly responsible for 9/11. I'd say that is pretty significant (and you can bet that the majority of this 1/3 is watching fox)

The Republican party depends on a group of deeply delusional voters known as Evangelicals. That's why, in the 21st Century, there are elected officials pretending to be concerned about gay couples, pretending that evolution is a lie that shouldn't be taught as fact, and pretending that a woman's body is the property of the Federal Government.

The Democratic party has it's fair share of hypocrites, but only one party demands delusion as part of their party platform. They are still demanding God be put back in Government, and pretending the founding fathers wanted the same thing. Their next sentence could be about the dangers of muslim theocracies, but their delusion is thought-proof. They know God chose America to fight Evil, just like their old hero President said himself: he answers to a higher father, even if the father he has in reality fought the same war against the same army only a decade earlier.

The Democrat party depends on a group of deeply delusional voters known as the Poor. That's why, in the 21st Century, there are elected officials pretending to be concerned about the inner-city degradation, pretending that illegal immigration is a pathway to citizenship, and pretending that an unborn child is not living and does not deserve the right to live.

The Republican party has it's fair share of hypocrites, but only on party demands delusion as party of their party platform. They are still demanding that wealth must be redistributed by force (IRS and tax code). Their next sentence could be about the great rich nation we live in and that it is a shame that a person who does not work should receive the same benefits as someone who does work.

I don't know how all the purveyors of flamebait keep getting modded up today, but it's quite disturbing.

because it kills the same folks Christians don't miss if they die in another manner once ex-utero

I'm a Christian, and I run in a few Christian circles. I'm not sure where you get your information, but most of Christians I know care deeply about every kind of person. Many of them are involved in helping people in prisons, others take their vacations in places like New Orleans, Haiti, and Costa-Rica so they can help people who are suffering. They also contribute to the local community as much as they can, and when somebody dies in their sphere of awareness, they are deeply moved. They have political orientations from hardcore-conservative to ultra-liberal and everything in between, but none of them take others' lives lightly.

As far as abortion goes, it is a little odd that Christians do tend to come out on one side of the issue. It is an interesting issue to say the least, and in my mind, rests on the person-hood of the fetus. This distinction is something about which the Bible doesn't say too much.

I don't fault you for your viewpoint (though it is absolutely flamebait). People get a lot of their information and experience with Christians from the worst of us (bigoted televangelists, lying politicians, etc). Just don't generalize about a social group until you've really bothered to understand them at a personal level.

The thing that irritates me the most about the GOP is their attitude toward their OWN people. God forbid you don't do EXACTLY what everyone else does. People mock the dems for not being completely unified, but I think that's a good thing. I think the damn legislators ought to be out there using what brains they have, representing THEIR people.

The state where I live, it's absolutely the worst. The gop at the state level is extremely intolerant of other voices within the party, so if you have an opinion that differs from the majority, you hide it, or the state party will actively campaign against you in the primaries.

My local US rep is a dem...probably the most conservative dem in the entire house...and the republicans have run multi-million dollar campaigns against him for the last 3 election cycles. They can't even effectively campaign against him because he's a morally conservative, anti-tax hawk, so they have to field these whackjob wingnuts...It's ugly. They get crushed every election. And they're gearing up to fight him again, because he has a D after his name, and it drives them fucking MAD.

I joined the Republican Party because I thought there were too many people spreading their "RINO" nonsense. I'm a moderate, but up to this year I was always independent. I want to bring moderation back to the party, as I believe the party was at one time more moderate and aligned to the middle. I also think that Christian right wingers (and i'm a Christian myself) are hijacking the party and turning it into a Jesus-fest. Again, I'm a believer. But that doesn't mean I want a "Holy Priest of the US" for President. The US was founded to escape religious oppression and I follow those tenants to a fault, regardless of my faith.

Barry Goldwater would be rolling in his grave if he knew of how the modern Republican party has been twisted.

This is where American politics gets weird. The party that proports to be populist is on the wrong side of public opinion for almost all the one-issue voters: guns, abortion, gay rights, creationism, etc. etc. I guess the exception was the Iraq War, but as a issue that had the poer to decide a vote, it had a shelf life of about 18 months, whereas for the right guns and abortion have been going strong for decades.

It's hard to blame them though. They feel that this issue is very important, and that the Democrats' stance on this basic right is merely a sign of a deeper disregard for personal rights in general

I've always felt that gun control was more a rural/urban divide than anything else.

If you live in the country, guns are how you hunt and keep the occasional mountain lion from eating your children. (And probably, in the event that someone does break into your house, having a gun is the only way to stop them in an

Why is this flamebait? Religions provide no objective evidence that they are true, yet require belief. When the facts contradict the dogma, they claim that the facts are just there to test your faith and that a true believer will see through them to the real underlying truth. Sounds like exactly the mindset that TFA is describing.

Two points here. First, that's a pretty broad brush you paint "religion" with there. It may be an accurate description of typical midwestern Protestant religion (who probably you encounter most often pushing the latest in Creationism) but many modern religions have a more sophisticated view on integrating with Reality than that. Even among Christianity, the Catholics are generally quite willing to consider evolution and the Big Bang - heck, Lemaitre was a Catholic priest! I won't even go into the eastern religions.
A more nuanced perspective is in order.

Second, I think that the reason a lot of people react like that is, to take an example, the Guy With The Truth is typically perceived to be not just a guy trying to inform for the sake of Truth, but a guy who's got some ideological agenda to push including a whole suite of objectionable ideas, not just the one, so it's easy to dismiss his statements wholesale. He's probably not just interested in saying "the universe began this way and here's why; interesting, eh?" but he oh so often goes on to make snide remarks about religion and politics and possibly underlying cultural value systems. Just read typical Slashdot comments here and you'll find plenty of examples. Wrap the truth in a turd often enough, and people will think it's smelly.

Two points here. First, that's a pretty broad brush you paint "religion" with there. It may be an accurate description of typical midwestern Protestant religion (who probably you encounter most often pushing the latest in Creationism) but many modern religions have a more sophisticated view on integrating with Reality than that. Even among Christianity, the Catholics are generally quite willing to consider evolution and the Big Bang - heck, Lemaitre was a Catholic priest! I won't even go into the eastern religions.A more nuanced perspective is in order.

Second, I think that the reason a lot of people react like that is, to take an example, the Guy With The Truth is typically perceived to be not just a guy trying to inform for the sake of Truth, but a guy who's got some ideological agenda to push including a whole suite of objectionable ideas, not just the one, so it's easy to dismiss his statements wholesale. He's probably not just interested in saying "the universe began this way and here's why; interesting, eh?" but he oh so often goes on to make snide remarks about religion and politics and possibly underlying cultural value systems. Just read typical Slashdot comments here and you'll find plenty of examples. Wrap the truth in a turd often enough, and people will think it's smelly.

Sorry, but the vast majority of religious people base their belief system on an unbelievably over-rated principle called 'faith'. Faith is wishful thinking, wrapped in circular reasoning, inside ignorance, and it is the cornerstone of religion which is inherently hostile to the facts. Catholicism may be a bit more flexible than most and is willing to beat a retreat rather than argue the facts, but the remainder of its belief system still relies on faith. The Catholic 'mysteries' are a prime example, little logical fallacies that are blatant contradictions but the flock are still required to accept them because "it's their faith."